UAB researcher elected to prestigious National Academy of Sciences

For just the second time in history, a UAB faculty member has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.

Louise Chow -- professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics, and a senior scientist in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Comprehensive Cancer Center -- was one of 105 people picked this year for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Chow received her FedExed letter of invitation from the academy on Wednesday.

The National Academy of Sciences -- sometimes called the science hall of fame -- has only 2,582 members. No one else from an Alabama institution is listed in the academy's directory.

Chow, a citizen of Taiwan, was elected as one of 21 foreign associates this week, along with 84 new members who are U.S. citizens.

The only previous National Academy of Sciences member from UAB was Dr. Max Cooper, a physician and immunologist who was elected in 1988. Cooper was the first person from an Alabama institution ever chosen for that august scientific body. He left Birmingham in 2007 after 40 years at UAB, lured to Emory University in Atlanta with the help of funding and support from the Georgia Research Alliance.

Chow came to UAB in 1993 from the University of Rochester School of Medicine. For the past 25 years she has worked on the pathobiology of human papilloma viruses. These viruses can be sexually transmitted and some types of the papilloma viruses are associated with cervical, penile and laryngeal cancers.

Chow earned her Ph.D. in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, and for years worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. As a talented electron microscopist, she helped discover mRNA splicing in the adenovirus.

Her collaborator in that work, Richard Roberts, won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993. In his Nobel banquet speech, Roberts gave tribute to his talented colleagues, particularly naming Chow and four other researchers.